Executive Vice President Damon Wilson and Scowcroft Center Senior Fellow Ian Brzezinski are quoted by USA Today on the latest fighting in Ukraine.
Russia’s defense ministry denied Friday that any military force crossed its border into east Ukraine and called the Ukrainian report “some kind of fantasy.”
Damon Wilson, who served as a Russia and Ukraine expert under Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, says Putin is trying to sow confusion while continuing to deny Western claims that Russia is behind the unrest in eastern Ukraine.”His rebels are in trouble, and he’s got to do something,” Wilson said.
Ukrainian troops have surrounded and besieged the eastern cities of Donestsk and Luhansk, the last remaining separatist strongholds, where separatist fighters “are trying to burrow into the civilian population,” Brzezinski said.Ukraine has proceeded slowly in part to limit civilian casualties, adopting a “slow strangulation approach” with “the hope that separatists accept that they will lose,” he said.